The iconoclastic scholar of Ancient
Philosophy, Mystery, And Magic, Peter Kingsley, has returned with
another book on the philosophers and mysteries of the ancient
Greek world, In The Dark Places Of Wisdom. But this is
quite a different type of book than the earlier volume. If you're
used to bland, impersonal, emotionless, heavy academic writing,
this is a refreshing change. Kingsley in this book is not only a
scholar but a storyteller. The written voice here is intensely
personal, more like a conversation than a lecture. Most of it is
narrative, moving along with surprising suspense for a tale about
things that are 2500 years old. This narrative is interspersed with
Kingsley's impassioned meditations on consciousness, philosophy,
and ancient cultures. Sometimes this passion can even be
confrontative - exhorting the reader to think deeper, to change
point of view. Yet this confrontation, rather than being scholarly
rhetoric, is an exact echo of the didactic tone taken by the Greek
philosopher-poets he is writing about.

The story begins with an account of the
founding of a
Greek colony in southern Italy. According to Kingsley (and other
scholars), the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East were far
more open to travel and exchange than is commonly thought.
Goods, people, and most especially ideas traveled back and forth
from Mesopotamia and Persia to Egypt, Crete, the Eastern
Mediterranean, and from there to the Greek colonies in Italy,
Sicily, and the south of France. Thus ideas and practices from the
Middle East or even Central Asia might show up in what has
hitherto been thought of as an "isolated" set of Greek towns in the
ancient "West."

The name of Kingsley's colony is Velia,
also known as "Elea." Elea is in south Italy, on the coast somewhat south
of
Naples. It is the discovery of carved Greek inscriptions from Velia
which sets Kingsley's story in motion.

The hero of Kingsley's story is
Parmenides, a philosopher from that town of Elea. Parmenides is known as
the "founder of
modern logic" and he used that logic to describe an ultimate
Reality which is very different from the one we see with our
senses. His logic proves Being - everything which exists - to be
unified, changeless, motionless, eternal, all the same - a single
pure, perfect fullness. He called this description the "Way of
Truth." Our perceptions of a changing, moving, developing reality,
with its alternations of opposites, was to him, ultimately, an
illusion, which he called the "Way of Seeming."

Parmenides' philosophical writings are in
poetry, rather than prose, and they begin with a vivid mythological
introduction
describing Parmenides' journey in a chariot, led by the Daughters
of the Sun, to the Gates of Day and Night, where he meets an
unnamed Goddess who is the source of all wisdom. This
mythological "proem" (introduction) has been assumed to be
simply decorative, a conventional way to present his hard
philosophy to a Greek audience - a kind of ornate, baroque title
page for an otherwise prosaic text of philosophical logic.

For Kingsley, though, this introduction
is a vital clue to what Parmenides was really about. Every detail of this
mythic
passage, according to Kingsley, can be decoded to show that this
philosopher was far more than just a dry logician who backed
himself up into a logically possible but unbelievable world-view.

The clues come from archaeological
discoveries at Velia, and from Kingsley's research into ancient Greek
mystical practices,
which had been inherited from the shamanic cultures of Asia at the
very beginning of Greek civilization. Inscriptions discovered at
Velia/Elea honor a centuries-long line of healer-priests, who
practiced a primeval technique of physical and mental healing
known as "incubation."

Kingsley spends a lot of time talking
about incubation. The practice involved having the patient visit a temple
of the healing god Apollo, or later, Asclepius, where he or she would lie
down to
sleep in a deep trance - described by the ancients in metaphors of
an animal's hibernation - and in that sacred sleep, the patient would
receive information in visionary dreams which would lead to
healing. The priests were there to interpret those dreams and
mediate the divine healing for the patients. Incubation is like a
voyage to the Underworld - the dark place of wisdom - and often
was actually done in underground caves.

The inscriptions honoring the
healer-priests found at Elea name Parmenides (in the original spelling of
"Parmeneides") as the
founder of their sacred lineage. Parmenides the logician is also a
mystical healer who journeyed, and led other journeyers, to the
inner Underworld. Therefore the mythological, poetic introduction
to Parmenides' poem is not at all simple conventional decoration,
but shows in every detail direct references to the practice of
altering consciousness by incubation, in order to enter and explore
inner space.

But how does this visionary consciousness
relate to the Parmenidean logic and explorations of Being - the way of
truth and
the way of illusion? Here is where Kingsley prefers to hint at,
rather than openly proclaim, the deeper teachings of Parmenides.
The hints point to the possibility that Parmenides' vision of Being
as one complete, immobile, unified singularity is a result of a
direct mystical experience of the world as it really is - a vision
beyond all description which would in later days, in other cultures,
be referred to as the "apophatic way" or the "way of silence and
darkness." And perhaps it also reflects, whether through indirect
transmission from India to Greece, or independent discovery, the
non-dualistic, monistic Indian philosophy of Advaita, which
became the doctrine of the Hindu Vedanta.

With that non-dual monism as Truth,
Parmenides would then proceed to the "way of seeming," explaining the
world as our
senses reveal it to us. Yet all along, if this theory about his
teaching is true, he would know, and teach, that the brilliant world
we know and strive in was an illusion.

If the world is an illusion, then what's
a philosopher to do? Parmenides, as portrayed by Kingsley, did not
withdraw from the "world of seeming" but was actively engaged in it. For
the voyage
to the dark place of wisdom was not followed by a retreat to an
ivory tower with a PhD, but to a return to working in the world.
Kingsley, in the later chapters of the book, recounts how
Parmenides and his philosophical disciples were also engineers,
designers, diplomats, warriors, and especially lawgivers. Indeed,
there was a special reverence given to lawgivers who could receive
legal wisdom from the divine Underworld!

In The Dark Places Of Wisdomis a
compelling
book, with a compelling story. Kingsley backs up everything he
says with references to primary and secondary texts. The words,
and their intensity, speak for themselves. Indeed, in one passage of
the book (page 120) he says that, much like proverbial magical
spells, words have their own intrinsic power to transform
consciousness, as they are heard and remembered and drop from
consciousness into one's inner mind. There, the words are like
seeds, growing in the darkness all by themselves, until they emerge
in the fullness of time.

This book will be too subtle for some
readers, who hanker after "ancient wisdom revealed" and mystical special
effects.
Academic classicists will react nervously to Kingsley's daring
interpretation of Parmenides' mythical poetic passage and his
association of Parmenides with irrational mysticism and shamanic
practices. But for those who are up for the adventure and the
journey, for those who are willing to pay attention and make the
effort, even if it causes the world to spin a bit strangely - if you are
not afraid of looking into the darkness - this book is for you.